On September 12, 2016, the SEC announced that it had reached a settlement with Jun Ping Zhang (“Ping”), a former executive of a Chinese subsidiary of Harris Corporation (“Harris”), regarding alleged violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (“FCPA”). The settlement was unusual, in that the SEC declined to also bring charges against Harris, an international communications and information technology company.
In June 2014, the Office of Investor Education and Advocacy at the Securities and Exchange Commission issued an alert cautioning that investment newsletters are often “used to carry out schemes designed to deceive investors.” In particular, the SEC advised investors to be “highly suspicious” of newsletter “promises” of “high investment returns” and to contact the SEC to report potential securities fraud in newsletters and other promotional materials.
In what the SEC called “the first federal jury trial by the SEC against a municipality or one of its officers for violations of the federal securities laws,” a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida found the City of Miami and its former budget director, Michael Boudreaux, guilty of securities fraud for misrepresentations related to three municipal bond offerings in 2009. Both Defendants are expected to appeal the jury decision.
On August 31, 2016, the SEC caught a break when a Ninth Circuit panel reversed Judge Manuel L. Real’s bench trial verdict for defendants, former corporate officers of the now-defunct Basin Water, Inc., finding that the SEC was wrongfully denied its shot at a jury trial in a securities fraud action involving alleged false reporting of millions of dollars in unrealized revenue. The panel vacated the judgment and remanded for a jury trial, noting that the SEC had not consented to the defendants’ withdrawal of their jury demand, and in fact, consistently demonstrated its objection to a bench trial, preserving its objection all the way to the appellate court. READ MORE
